


Issues

by Amethyzt



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: F/M, murven - Freeform, six years in space, spacekru, speculation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 05:56:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13944411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amethyzt/pseuds/Amethyzt
Summary: Six years in space is a long time.Or, how Raven Reyes and John Murphy evolved from barely friends, to longing, to something that just feels right--everyone else be dammed.A story told in snapshots from the six years in space.





	Issues

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of the trailer (hopefully!) coming out in a few days, here's the fic I've been working on since December.

**Day 10**

_I'm jealous, I'm overzealous_

_When I'm down, I get real down_

 

After all the time on the ground, Raven had forgotten what silence was like. On Earth, the birds chirped, the ground crunched underfoot, the wind rattled against windows and insects buzzed in the air. There was always something to listen to, to listen for—no matter the circumstance or problem they found themselves dealing with. Even when they sat together without speaking, there was noise

The Ring is silent. Even the soft mechanical hum ever present in the Ark is almost non-existent.

She hates it.

Raven sighs. She’s perched on the small ledge of the window facing the orange ball of destruction that is now Earth. Had she not been present during its transformation, she would’ve sworn she was staring at the sun. Her thoughts drift to Clarke, whom they were forced to leave behind. Raven guesses she is dead, but if anyone could survive the end of the world, it would be Clarke.

_Or Murphy,_ she thinks to herself, a small grin on her lips.

They haven’t spoken much in the last few days. After getting the Ring functioning again, figuring out the water situation and cultivating more algae blooms, all seven of them needed to be alone. They would have the next five years to drive each other crazy.

She hasn’t seen Monty or Harper in three days—those two are cooped up in the room they claimed their own. She checks up on Bellamy every few hours. He seems okay, but Raven knows he’s hurting. She does however pass Echo in the hallways pretty frequently. Echo seems to have taken a fascination with the Ring and spends her time exploring.

As for Murphy and Emori, she hasn’t seen one without the other since they arrived. Wherever Murphy is, Emori isn’t far behind. They look at each other like everyone else is the butt of one of their inside jokes and the thought makes Raven bristle. And then, the thought that their relationship annoys her pisses her off. Why should she care?

She hears soft footsteps coming from the hall behind her. It must be Echo making her rounds.

“Found anything fun to do around here yet?” Raven asks, her eyebrows raising in surprise as Murphy, not Echo, appears from the dimly-lit corridor. “Well, well, well,” she says. “The cockroach crawls out of his hovel.”  

Murphy smirks and stops before her. “Reyes,” he greets.

Raven leans forward on the ledge to look behind him. “Where’s Emori?”

“Sleeping,” Murphy says with a shrug.

“Finally done banging her brains out, huh?” Raven says, her eyes trailing over the fresh love bites on the side of his neck. She didn’t even care how petty her voice sounded.

Murphy lets out a quiet snicker, licking his bottom lip. “Careful Reyes,” he says, and she swears his voice drops an octave. “I might start to think you’re jealous.”

Two could play at that game. She winks at him. “I’m just jealous people have something to do around here.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” he says.

“And why’s that?”

He motions for her to follow him, and she trails after him in the corridor he has just come from. Their footfalls on the century-old metal are the only sound she hears and she wonders what he wants to show her.

“Believe it or not, I was looking for you,” Murphy says as they round the corner to a porthole-sized window. He points to a nearby self-floating wreck in space. “I’m pretty sure that’s the Sky Box, and I was hoping you would help me reach it.”

Raven presses up against the window, mentally measuring the distance between the Ring and the wreck.

It wasn’t far. She’s sure they could just spacewalk it. They would need someone on the Ring to spot them, so to speak, and make sure their suits remained connected to the Ark, but it was doable.

“Yeah, it shouldn’t take us more than 15 minutes to get there,” she says.

“Us?”

“You’re not going out there alone.”

“I never knew you cared so much,” he says, but she can tell he’s teasing her.

“Please Murphy,” she scoffs. “I’m just making sure all the algae you’ve consumed doesn’t go to waste. You’re a resource.”

They convince Echo to help them. She thinks they’re insane, but agrees.

Once suited up, Raven and Murphy stand in the airlock chamber.

“The cable should be long enough for us enter Sky Box,” Raven says to Echo. “We have one hour of oxygen, and that should be more than enough. The only thing I need you to do is radio us if something goes wrong with the cables.”

“I can do that,” Echo says. “Are you sure you want to go out there?” Her fear of space is written all over her face.

“Not like there’s anything better to do here,” Murphy says. He secures his helmet and gives Echo a thumbs up. “We’re ready, so just open the hatch.”

It opens with a sharp hiss and Raven is lifted off her feet with the lack of gravity. She floats out of the Ring and a feeling of calm floods over her. She almost forgets she’s not alone.

Murphy is staring around himself with a face that can only be described as full of wonder. It suddenly occurs to her that he has never spacewalked before.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she says to him through the intercom system in their suits.

“I can see why you wanted to go out this way,” he says.

She mentally high-fives herself when they reach the Sky Box in exactly 15 minutes. They have to circle it in order to find the old airlock entrance, but once they do, they open it and slide inside. Because it has been disconnected from the Ark, there is no power and no oxygen. They have to keep their suits on, and it’s dark, but it seems stable.

Murphy and Raven propel themselves through the narrow hallway using the wall, and soon they reach the prison block. Rows and rows of cells stacked on top of each other.

From the corner of her eye, she sees Murphy turn left and start descending toward the bottom floor.

“Where are you going?” she asks, following him.

“My cell,” he says.

They pass a few open ones on the way to his, and Raven peers inside to get a look of the forever-floating books, pens and mementos from the hundred teens that had been sent to the ground.

Murphy’s cell is surprisingly devoid of personal belongings. They push the furniture aside to get in. He searches in the air between his old cot and the floor. Her eyes scan the numerous tally marks covering the better part of the left walls. It reminded her that Murphy was just a boy when he was locked up.

“What are you looking for?” Raven asks.

He snatches a small square floating overhead and smiles down at it. It’s dark and Raven can’t see what it is from where’s she at, so she gets closer. She anchors her hands on Murphy’s shoulders as she looks at what is in his hands.

“Is that you?” she squints at the grainy photograph in his hands.

“Yeah,” he says. “With my dad and my mom.”

“Holy shit,” she says, and they both laugh quietly.

Photos were rare in the Ark. So rare, that even people in Alpha station had their picture taken only once or twice in their life, if at all.

“How did they…”

“My dad saved half of his rations every day after he found out my mom was pregnant with me—that’s why he looks half-starved,” he says, chuckling. “He finally had enough to trade for one Polaroid a few months after I was born. He told me my mom was too excited to be mad at him after she found out.”

“You look a lot like him.”

She feels him shrug beneath her hands. He unzips a pocket at the chest of his space suit and tucks the photo safely inside.

What he says next takes her by surprise.

“You want to see Finn’s cell?”

 “You know which cell is his?”

He does. They make sure their cables don’t get caught on anything as they head upwards, using the guardrails to climb. He leads her to a cell on the top floor. The door is stuck and Murphy has to help her pry it open.

Raven is not sure what she expected, but once inside she feels nothing.

“Are you sure this is Finn’s?”

Murphy nods once.

It looks…bland. The walls are still the standard grey color, and she’s sure that if everything wasn’t hovering in the air due to the lack of gravity, there would be nothing out of place. There is no evidence that Finn spent months here.

And then she sees it.

Hovering just above the floor is a single metal bird, much like the one she used to wear around her neck. She thinks about picking it up and taking it with her, but decides against it.

“You know,” she whispers, “for all the time we were together, I’d have thought Finn would’ve waited more than 10 days to sleep with someone else.”

Murphy doesn’t say anything. She appreciates that.

“We should head back,” she says. “I’m sure Emori would freak if you were here, even if you’re spacewalking with the amazing Raven Reyes.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that would make it better,” he says.

They make it back to the Ring. Echo is relieved, even if she didn’t say it aloud.

Later, when she’s peeling off the protective jumpsuit for the space suit, her mind wanders back to what Murphy said.

 

**Day 67**

_When I'm high, I don't come down_

_I get angry, baby, believe me_

 

Algae doesn’t taste any better two months later. No matter how many different ways Monty tries to serve it, human taste buds were not meant to consume algae. Yes, it was their only source of food, but complaining about it was allowed—there wasn’t much else to do.

She, Bellamy, Harper, Monty and Echo are sitting around the conference room table where Kane, Jaha and Abby used to discuss important Ark business. Today, it is where they share meals. Emori and Murphy haven’t shown up for breakfast yet, but that’s normal. Both are late risers.

Raven sips her brewed algae—an invention of Monty’s that was an attempt to make the plant act as coffee. It’s definitely not the same but it’s better than eating it raw.

“I miss salt,” Harper says. “I never thought I would say that.”

Raven sets her mug down. “I miss the Ark’s nutrient packets,” she says and they hum in agreement.

“I miss Monty’s moonshine,” Bellamy says, with a small smile. It doesn’t fully reach his eyes, but it’s there.

They laugh at his statement and Monty holds up a finger. “Be careful what you wish for,” he says. “I’m working on a way to make alcohol with this stuff.”

Harper groans and buries her face in Monty’s neck.

“I’m not sure your alcohol will be as good as the one in Polis,” Echo says. “My favorite was—”

She never finishes her sentence. The door to the room slams open and Emori walks in briskly, Murphy at her heels. The air seems to thicken.

The pair sits in the remaining two chairs next to Bellamy. No one says anything for a few minutes. Raven exchanges a look with Murphy, but his expression gives nothing away.

At last, Bellamy breaks the awkward silence by clearing his throat and asking her about how to get the Ark database up and running. They’re hoping to be able to access the movies and old TV shows in it, but while they have power and oxygen, they haven’t been able to get the screens up and running. When Diana Sydney took off with the Exodus ship, it caused immense damage to the Ark’s mainframe.

“It’ll be nice to be able to watch a movie in the evenings,” Harper says. “Or at least have the option to.”

The conversation takes off in that direction, but Murphy and Emori don’t say anything for the rest of the meal. Every now and then, Raven glances over at them. While they’re sitting together, Murphy’s body is facing away from her and the rest of the group. She finds that odd.

It’s weirder still when Emori leaves the table, her cup clattering angrily on the table, and doesn’t look back to see if Murphy is following her.

“What shit on her algae?” Raven says and Murphy sighs.

“It’s nothing, just ignore her,” Murphy says.

After breakfast, Raven wanders over to the med bay. She has recently converted half of it into her workshop. Even though she knows they still have a better part of five years before they can go back to Earth, she’s begun planning their return.

With no fuel for a roundtrip, she needs to find a way to get the spaceship safely through Earth’s ozone without burning up in the atmosphere. It was definitely a puzzle that will take her the better part of those five years. But the sooner she has a concrete plan, and a backup, and a backup to the backup, the more at ease she will feel.

Maybe then she will get some rest. It’s funny, because even though there isn’t an immediate danger looming over them, she still can’t seem to sleep well.

“And here I thought we were on vacation.”

She looks up as Murphy walks into the med bay. “Reyes, we have only been here for two months. Already eager to go back?”

She sighs and hops onto one of the counters. “You’re right, we have only been here for two months,” she says. “So how come your honeymoon phase is over?”

“You caught that, huh?”

“Everyone caught that,” she says. “You should keep your problems to yourself. Don’t make us have to bear you both.”

Murphy hums noncommittally and looks over the notes she has been working on. “Seriously? Algae-based fuel?” He snorts. “You know, that stuff is not all-purpose.”

“I’m just listing all of the possible solutions, no matter how crazy,” she says. “What’d you do to Emori?”

He shakes his head and scoffs. “Why are you so fucking nosy? Couples fight. That’s it.”

“Okay,” she says, throwing up her hands. “If you say so.”

She hops off the counter, wincing when her leg lands harshly on the floor. If Murphy noticed, he didn’t bring it up. Instead he pulls up a chair across from her and her growing pile of notes and asks about fueling the rocket with some sort of renewable energy.

She already had it on her list, but was still impressed that’s the first place his mind went.

They spend the next two hours talking about rocket fuel. She laughs when he suggests building a huge hamster wheel and making someone run in it to power their descent. He retracts his suggestion after Raven says he would most likely be that someone.

 

**Day 187**

_I could love you just like that_

_And I could leave you just as fast_

 

Raven and Harper have come up with an exercise regimen for them. Even though they’re eating a low-caloric diet and gaining weight is not the issue, they need to work out. Without exercise, their bodies will begin to lose bone and muscle. It’s why the Ark mandated everyone on board to exercise for one hour each day at a specific time according to their station, job and age group.

While most of them knew this and had been exercising on their own daily after the first few days aboard the Ring, they forgot to pass the memo on to Echo and Emori. Thankfully, Echo kept herself busy each day practicing hand-to-hand combat and Emori had been exercising with Murphy most days—in more ways than one, Raven was sure.

Exercising as a group would be better for morale, they decided. Not that it was mandatory, they could do whatever the hell they wanted, but if they wanted to work out together, there was a set time they would meet in the morning.

Sometimes everyone did show up, but usually it was just Monty, Harper, Bellamy and Raven.

This morning, it seemed like it would be just her.

She started stretching, her left elbow behind her head as she pulled on it with her other hand. Since she was alone, she decided to tweak the regimen a little by warming up with a walk around the Ring. She wished she could take off in a run, like she sees Bellamy do sometimes in the early evenings, shirt tucked into his back pocket and curls wet with sweat.

If Clarke was here, she would have a heart attack, Bellamy looked that good.

Sometimes she thought about sneaking into his room at night in order to get some company. Space had turned out to ramp up her loneliness tenfold. But she restrained herself for two reasons: One, it seemed disrespectful to Clarke, whether she was alive or dead, and two, the last time she slept with Bellamy had only left her feeling lonelier.

“Reyes!”

She turns to see Murphy jogging up to catch up to her. “No group exercise this morning?”

“Now there is,” she says, her eyes scanning down his body on their own accord. “You should be wearing a shirt. You’re pasty.”

“Sorry I haven’t been able to work on my tan,” he replies. “The sun in space is a few million degrees too harsh for my fair complexion. Plus, not all of us have Blake’s golden skin. Or yours, as a matter a fact.”

“If you’re trying to butter me up so I’ll go easy on our workout today, you’re not even close,” she says.

They speed-walk the length of the Ring, and then work on crunches. They pass a basketball they found in the common room to each other as they rise with each abdominal curl, their knees almost touching. It makes crunches less boring.

It’s not the first time she and Murphy work out together, but it’s the first time Raven notices how the exertion causes Murphy’s skin to flush down to the waistband of his pants. Beads of sweat rain down his body. She has a mental picture of licking them away and is instantly both repulsed and embarrassed.

Yeah, she’s lonely.

“Are you up for some squats?” Murphy asks once they finish their final set of crunches.

Raven purses her lips. She should, but lower-body exercises are difficult for her. “I am, but you know I’ll need your help.”

“I live to serve.”

He has to stand close besides her on her left side. Murphy’s right hand is hot against the naked skin of the small of her back, and the other is behind her bad knee to make sure it bends correctly as she squats.

These are the hardest for her to do, and Murphy knows it. He doesn’t say anything when her legs shake as she lowers her body. He also doesn’t reassure her that she’s doing great (Bellamy likes to do that and it drives her up the fucking wall.)

Also, Murphy’s hand on her skin is extremely distracting and she wonders when she became touch-starved. The physical contact has her longing for more, and suddenly she’s short of breath for reasons beyond exercise.

It’s not that she’s attracted to Murphy, or that she wants him. She knows he’s unavailable. Any man, besides Monty or Bellamy, would do. Unfortunately, those are the only men on board.

She’s on her final set of squats when Emori finds them. Neither Raven nor Murphy think anything of it—they are all aware of Raven’s limitations.

But the way Emori looks at her at that moment makes Raven speculate about what happens behind closed doors.

“Hey,” Emori says. “Mind if I join?”

“Of course not,” Raven says.

They do a few more strength exercises before Emori challenges Murphy to see who can run a lap faster, and they take off without looking back.

 

**Day 377**

_But you don't judge me_

_'Cause if you did, baby, I would judge you too_

 

She’s playing cards with Bellamy and Echo in the common room when it finally happens.

They have been playing for a couple of hours now, moving from poker, to blackjack, to Go Fish and finally a game of Bullshit. She’d like to think she knows both Bellamy and Echo pretty well at this point, so beating them should be a piece of cake. Raven knows Bellamy eyebrow twitches when he’s feeling confident about his cards and she knows Echo licks her lip when she’s losing and doesn’t want them to know.

“Three seven’s,” Raven says, sliding her cards on the small pile in the center of the coffee table.

Bellamy slaps his palm on the table. “Bullshit!” He flips over her cards and groans when he sees that she was actually, telling the truth.

“Read em’ and weep, son,” she says, laughing as Bellamy collects all the cards on the table.

“I knew I should’ve called you out on those two three’s” he says to Echo.

Forms of entertainment are scarce on the Ring. They still haven’t managed to get the Ark mainframe up, probably never will, and so they’re back to old-school forms of fun. The boys play basketball sometimes in the east wing. Harper has taken to practicing new hairstyles on all the girls’ hair—and the boys too if they let her get her hands on them. Bellamy is still running every night, sometimes with Echo. Those two have formed a strange kinship, but it works.

They’re not sleeping together though. Raven had zero qualms about asking them.

Sex, of course, was the activity of choice for the two couples on board. Not that they discussed it together very often. Everyone just knew. Besides, it would be rude of them to dangle food before the hungry.

Harper sits sideways on one of the lounge chairs in the room, her feet hanging off the armrest. She’s reading one of the crappy dime store romance novels they found in the library. Emori and Murphy are spooning on the couch. His eyes are closed as she runs a hand through his hair.

Suddenly everyone jolts as the door to the common room is swung open abruptly. Monty strides in wearing his stupid “Make Algae Not War” apron and the biggest smile on his face, a clear pitcher of some green-looking liquid sloshing in one hand.

“I did it guys,” he says. “I successfully converted the cellulose in our harvest of prymnesium parvum, releasing the carbohydrates, kicking off decay and finally completing a full cycle of fermentation.”

Raven smiles widely at him. The rest look at each other in confusion.

“In English, Monty?” Harper asks, raising an eyebrow.

“We have booze.”

And so they drink, and they laugh. They dance in silence, their bodies swaying to the tune of their whoops and hollers. Raven memorizes the look of carefree happiness in Bellamy’s face. It’s been a while since she has seen him look like that.

They play flip cup, but at that point they’re so gloriously drunk—they have all turned into lightweights with the absence of alcohol—no one is really paying attention to the rules and even she can’t get the stupid coin to bounce into a cup.

Monty and Harper also decide to create a new record of the longest kiss in space. Was there even a record to break there? It didn’t matter in the end, since they were both so gone they just began making out on the couch.

Bellamy makes some snide comment about how easily this could turn into an orgy and they laugh.

It doesn’t, for the record. Harper tears her lips away from Monty and suggests a game of hide and seek instead.

They make Echo count to 100 as the rest of them disperse like shooting stars over the Ring. Raven knows exactly where she’s going to hide.

She enters the med bay and opens the obscure maintenance closet in the corner. It leads up to the air ducts and it was where Abby first found her eavesdropping shortly after the 100 where sent to the ground. She’s about to close the door in front of her when someone’s foot stops the door in its path.

“Murphy, get your own hiding spot,” she says, but he disregards her and squeezes inside.

“Too late,” he says. “All the good ones are taken.”

“So go hide in plain sight,” she says, giggling as she tries to push him out. “I don’t care.”                                

He stands his ground and shakes his head. “If I leave, I’ll lead Echo here. And you’ll lose.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

They hear the med bay door open and Murphy puts a finger to his lips. The space is so small, their chests are but a whisper away from each other. She can smell the alcohol on his breath, the heat of it warming up the tip of her nose as he exhales.

It’s dark in the closet, but she can still see blue of his irises clear as day. They hear a metal thump, followed by angry-sounding trigedasleng she can only guess are curse words.

She doesn’t know why it makes her laugh, but it does. Murphy’s laughing too, but at least he’s trying to be quiet. He shushes her, but that only makes her laugh more. He puts a hand over her mouth.

Somehow, Echo doesn’t find them and they hear her leave the med bay.

Murphy doesn’t remove his hand. So Raven licks it.

“You’re fucking gross,” he says, chuckling. “You know that?”

“I know I’m drunk,” she replies, and then flashes him her biggest smile. “I’m really drunk.”

She dives into another fit of giggles and Murphy shushes her again. She doesn’t know why he insists on doing that since it’s obvious she’s not listening to him.

“Reyes, you’re gonna make us lose,” he loudly whispers.

“I’m Raven,” she says. “I never lose, and you won’t either.” She taps the center of his chest to accent her words and he grabs her hand.

“Raven,” he says, his voice a warning. “You need to be quiet.”

She licks her lips, aware of how his eyes follow her tongue’s movement. It pleases her. She likes to have the upper hand.

“Make me,” she says, trying to remain serious. She fails, however, and starts repeating herself over and over and over until Murphy shuts her up by tilting her chin to meet his and drowning her words with a sloppy kiss.

He pulls away almost immediately, but it’s too late.

“I’m sorry,” he stutters. “I need to go.”

She wants to pull him back to her, back to her lips that crave him, perhaps because of her inebriated state, perhaps not…

But she doesn’t. She lets him go. He’s not hers. She’s not sure when she started wishing he was.

Echo finds her alone a few minutes later. She says that she knew there was someone in the closet. Raven doesn’t ask her why she didn’t open it her first time around.

 

**Day 379**

 

They don’t talk about what happened. They don’t talk at all.

 

**Day 533**

_'Cause I got issues_

_But you got 'em too_

 

They all know Bellamy sleeps with their only radio. He keeps it on his bedside table in case Octavia tries to get in contact with him. Communication between the Ring and the bunker is rare, short and extremely difficult, but they do manage to touch base every couple of weeks. Having the radio close by him helps him sleep at night. Besides, there’s no one in that bunker that the rest of them are eager to speak to. Monty has Harper at his side, Echo doesn’t have anyone in the bunker, and Murphy has Emori. So they let Bellamy handle communication.

Sometimes she sits with Bellamy in the evenings after his run and accompanies him as he tries to make contact with the bunker. It means everything to him. Hearing his sister’s voice keeps him going. He told Raven it almost makes leaving Clarke behind worth it. _Almost._

Raven did manage to talk to Abby about a month ago. She’s still holding out hope Clarke is alive. For Bellamy’s sake, Raven hopes Abby doesn’t say that to him. He’ll never heal.

They kissed a few weeks ago, but it was wrong. They both felt it.

Raven is pouring over her notes in the med bay. If Monty managed to make alcohol from algae, she’s sure she can make fuel for the rocket. The real problem is the quantity of fuel that will be needed. She’s not sure if she has the resources in the Ring to make that much.

Mecha station would be really helpful to have floating around space right now.

The door to the med bay blows wide open, shattering her train of thought.

“Jesus Bellamy, what the fuck?” she says as she takes in his wild-eyed look.

He just holds up the radio, which emits white noise into the air. A few unintelligible transmissions crackle, and she furrows her brow.

Then she hears it.

“ _Bellamy…berries….light house….green….”_

_“Miss you.”_

“Is that…?” She walks slowly over, her hands curling around the radio in his hand. He won’t let go. “Clarke?” she shouts. “Clarke is that you?”

Bellamy swallows. “She can’t hear us,” he says. “I tried. I thought I was going crazy.”

“She’s alive, Bellamy.” Raven looks up at his face, and notices the tear tracks running down his chin.

“My princess,” he says.

She attacks him with a bear hug, his tears wetting her hair and face. She feels her emotions bubbling to the surface as well. This is the best news they could have ever gotten. The white noise stops as Clarke ends her transmission on Earth, and suddenly Raven has another mission to accomplish.

“We have to find a way to talk to her,” she says, and punches Bellamy playfully in the arm. “Now I know you’re definitely never letting anyone borrow that radio.”

“Not for the next three and a half years,” Bellamy agrees. “Can you fix the communication?”

“I can try.”

She’s happy for him.

A few hours later, she decides to take a break. Under Bellamy’s watch, she fiddled with the radio to try to ensure Clarke would receive their transmission the next time she called. They wouldn’t know until then if it worked. And if it didn’t? She would try something different.

She walks over to the common room, thinking maybe she can curl up on the couch with book or maybe play a game of chess with Harper if she’s there.

To her surprise, the common room is empty save for Emori, who is sitting on a lounge chair looking up at the ceiling. She turns her head to see her come in, but ultimately, Raven probably wasn’t the person she was hoping would walk in.

“Hey,” Raven greets.

“Hey yourself,” Emori replies.

Raven knows Emori doesn’t like her. It is what it is. Raven doesn’t have a problem with her, except for the fact she may or may not want her boyfriend. It’s as good a reason as any to hate someone, she guesses. Surely, Murphy has told her about the kiss.

“Want to play chess?” Raven asks, gesturing to the set-up in a nearby table.

“No, thank you,” she says.

_Okay_ , Raven mouths. Since their arrival on the Ring, Emori has kept to herself. Aside from Murphy, it was clear she didn’t trust any of them. In turn, it made Raven wary of her. If something went wrong, she’s not too sure she could count on her to help them—unless it benefited her.

She respects that, but it doesn’t mean she likes it.

Raven plops down onto the couch and grabs an Agatha Christie book off the coffee table. She maneuvers her leg to stretch out across it. Harper had just finished the novel and recommended it to her. Murder, intrigue, scrappy characters? Sign her up.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Raven looks up from her book. “Me?”

“Do you see anyone else around?”

“Alright then,” Raven says. “Ask away.”

“What makes you so important?”

The question, even if coming from Emori, catches her off-guard. “Excuse me?”

“Really though,” Emori sits up. “What makes Raven Reyes so damn indispensable? You can’t run. You can’t fight. You can’t even protect yourself.”

Raven presses her lips together in an effort to stay collected. She feels her eyes well up with hot, angry tears and she tries to keep them from falling. Emori has hit a nerve, and she know she has.

“It’s your mind isn’t it?” Emori says. “If it weren’t for your brain, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Neither would you.”

Not wanting to hear another word, Raven heaved herself off the couch and left the room as quick as she could. Her mismatched footsteps on the ground ring in her ears.

The floodgates open once she’s in the hallway. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, wiping the moisture away.

She crashes into Murphy in the corridor. He grabs her by her elbows.

“Whoa Reyes, watch where you’re going,” he says. He notices the tears running down her face. “Raven, what’s wrong?” he says, concerned.

“Your girlfriend is a bitch.” She tries to pull away from his vice-like grip, but he doesn’t let go.

“What the fuck happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She struggles in his grip as he tries to convince her to tell him what’s wrong. “Leave me alone!” She yells in his face, and he finally releases her.

Eventually, she reaches her destination. She knocks at the door haphazardly.

“Yes?” Echo opens the door, obviously annoyed. That changes when she takes in Raven, who knows she must look a mess.

“I need you to teach me how to fight.”

 

**Day 734**

_So give 'em all to me_

_And I'll give mine to you_

 

In a span of a month, Murphy and Emori break up and get back together about nine times. It wasn’t a secret they were having problems. Everyone knew. There were only seven of them up here, after all. They tried to respect each other’s privacy as much as possible though, so no one comments when Emori shows up to breakfast with eyes still red from crying, or when Murphy forces himself to run around the Ring without stopping until he can’t even catch his breath without dry-heaving.

They didn’t realize how much they all depended on stable dynamics until then. Volatile outbursts weren’t good for the group, and both Murphy and Emori have been wild cards from the beginning. They run a well-oiled machine where everyone has their task and purpose to keep them alive.

With Murphy and Emori constantly at odds, there is no peace. Raven tries to avoid them as much as possible, but when you’re literally the last seven people in space, it’s virtually impossible.

“Raven, I need you here,” Echo says.

They’re in the middle of training. Beads of sweat rain down Raven’s temples.

 “You need to focus,” Echo chastises. “I know your brain is always going off in twelve different directions, but when you’re in battle, you need to focus on the person who’s trying to drive a spear in your stomach.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Let’s do that move again.”

Echo has proven herself to be a great teacher. Raven can’t physically do all of the moves the others can, but Echo has taught her to use that to her advantage. It feels good to get her heartrate up. Training is her favorite part of the day. For an hour or two, she feels invincible—like the old Raven, but in the best way possible.

After training, she and Echo head to the kitchen to drink water. Raven pulls herself up to the counter and Echo fills up two glasses.

“You were distracted all morning,” Echo says. “What’s on your mind?”

Unexpectedly, Raven has found a close friend in Echo. Since they started training, they’ve formed a kinship she never thought possible. Raven had never had many friends, let alone girlfriends, growing up. It was nice.

“What do you think?”

“Murphy and Emori?” Echo asks, and Raven nods. “Yeah, I heard them last night too. They need to leave each other. Those two are not a good match.”

Raven snorts. “What are you talking about? They’re practically the same person.”

“Absolutely not,” Echo says, taking a sip of water.

“They’re both survivors.”

“Different type of survivors. There are lines John wouldn’t cross. Emori would do anything to save her own skin.”

Raven rolled her eyes. “You don’t know Murphy like I do. He’d do anything to survive.”

“He wouldn’t kill you,” Echo says. “But _she_ would. She’d kill all of us. She’s true _Sangedakru_ , outcast or not.”

Echo placed her empty glass in the sink with a soft clink. “This tin can has the potential to change people, for better or for worse. Look at us,” she gestured between them. “I’d have fought you without a second thought to save my people.”

“I’m really glad it never came to that,” Raven says with a small smile.

“Yeah, you would have lost.”

After training, she heads to the med bay. She’s _this_ close to fixing communication between them and Clarke, she can feel it. Bellamy’s getting more and more frustrated with every day that passes. Hearing her voice and not being able to respond back is his personal form of hell, he told her.

She _envies_ him. It’s a terrible thing to feel, but it’s true. She would give anything to be that in love with someone who feels the same way about you, even if they’re millions of miles away and she’d have to wait a while to be with them.

Her thoughts drift to Murphy, and that awful two-second drunken kiss they shared. Maybe it wasn’t a spark that she felt. Maybe it was just the need to connect with someone. _But if that’s the case, kissing Bellamy should have done the trick,_ she thought.

Raven knows Murphy loves Emori—everyone does. She saw the real him before any of them did. In the back of her mind though, she thought, if given the opportunity, that she could fall in love with him too.

On the ground, he had appeared to only be a selfish lying psychopath willing to bury his own mother to save himself. He shot her, permanently disabled her, and still here she was feeling not an ounce of negativity toward him. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Because John Murphy, as tough as he tried to pretend he was, has grown into a man his father would’ve been proud of. She sees it in the way he waters their algae farm when Monty is occupied, in the way he jokes around with Bellamy to make him feel better, and of course, in the way he looks at Emori when she’s not looking.

Raven admires him, and that’s something she thought she’d never feel.

But one thing was for sure. Space was a bore for Murphy. He’d already read 90 percent of the books in the common room, and sucked so bad at chess he refused to play with anyone. She wondered if the constant break-ups and make-ups between he and Emori were not just another way for him to stir the pot.

He was John Murphy after all.

She’s putting the radio back together for the umpteenth time when he walks into the med bay. Raven looks up and acknowledges with a nod. It’s obvious he came in with a purpose, but until she puts the entire radio back together, she won’t give him so much as the time of day. She needs to concentrate.

Only once she’s done does she meet his eyes. “What do you want, Murphy?”

“What makes you think I want something?” he says with a small lopsided smile.

She misses his stupid smirk. They haven’t spoken much, let alone been alone together, since they kissed last year. She tried to convince herself it’s for the best. They have a complicated history and they shouldn’t ensnare it further.

Raven lets out an exasperated sigh. “You’re wasting my time.”

“All we have is time,” he says, raising an eyebrow. She knows he’s right.

She crosses her arms and leans over the table. “Are you bored?” She asks, an amused lilt in her voice.

“Desperately,” he admits. “Monty and Harper snuck to their room, Bellamy is running around the Ring—which by the way, have you seen his dumb beard? He looks homeless— Emori is pissed at me, as per usual, and Echo terrifies me,” he lets a small chuckle. “Is there anything I can do here?”

“Glad to know I’m your last resort, but no, not really,” she says. “I don’t trust you alone with my algae fuel prototype.”

“Then stick around, Reyes,” he says, and she can feel his eyes boring a hole into her. “We can blow shit up together.”

She tilts her head as she considers it—not blowing shit up together like he said, but just spending time. She does miss him, and she is also, desperately bored.

“C’mon,” he throws his hands up in the air. “There is absolutely nothing you can do here that can’t wait—including me,” he adds with a smirk.

She scoffs, fighting the smile on her lips at his crude joke. “How are you so sure that I want to fuck you?”

“I’m one of three men in space.” he says. “I’d say those are good odds.” He scratches at the scruff accenting his jawline. “Plus, my beard is ten times better than Blake’s.”

Once she figures out that he’s not going to leave her alone until she says yes, she gives in. He bumps her hip as he passes by her and opens the maintenance closet. He gestures to the ladder leading up to the air ducts and she eyes him like he’s insane. There’s no way she’s going up there. She’s been through them before, back when she was spying on Abby after she sent the 100 to the ground. There’s nothing in those air ducts.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, balancing his forearm on one of the ladder rungs.

That’s an easy question. “Not even a little,” she says with a grin.

“Fair enough,” he says. “But hopefully you’re as nosy as you are impertinent.”

She laughs. “That’s a big word for John Murphy, the genius who I hear spelled ‘die’ wrong on the side of the dropship.”

He muttered something along the lines of _never going to live that down_ before shaking his head and starting to climb the ladder. “I’ve been reading the dictionary, Reyes—I told you I’m desperately bored.”

She rolls her eyes and climbs up after him. Climbing is a little awkward with her brace, but doable. He helps to hoist her up once they’re in the air duct. The space is extremely narrow and low, so they have to crawl to get around. Raven really hopes that Murphy knows where he’s going.

He seems to, at least. Murphy leads her through the air ducts with purpose, the sound of their knees thudding against the metal dull in the stale air.

Murphy motions her to follow him as he wiggles through a dark opening. Against her better judgement, she does.

And fuck, she didn’t regret it.

They hop out into a round shallow space with an enormous window looking out into space above them. She racks her brain to find out where in the Ring they are. As far as she was aware, they didn’t have an observatory or anything similar in the Ark—but that’s exactly what this looks like.

The ceilings are still low, so she can’t stand at full height. She has to hunch over and bend her knees to fit. The floor sounds hollow underneath her, leading her to believe they must be above a room in the Ring.

“What is this place?” she asks, wonder evident in her voice. She could really see the stars here.  With no artificial light, they glittered above them like pinpricks of pure light.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” he says. He lets out a long exhale as he sits down on the floor, resting his arms on the tops of his bent knees.

She hears a faraway banging and holds up a hand to silence him. She concentrates on the sporadic sound. _Of course_ , she thought. Raven knew exactly where they were.

“We’re above the kitchen,” she says. “I wonder why they covered this up…”

“It would’ve made for quite a view, I’m sure.”

“The astronauts must’ve not had another choice. Or maybe the window retracts and would have become a point of connection with the thirteenth station.” She lowers herself to the ground beside him, stretching out her legs as she looks upwards. “I never thought I would see the stars this way again after going to the ground.” She smiles. “This almost feels like spacewalking, we’re so close.”

Murphy groans as he lays down. “Nah, spacewalking was pretty fucking cool.”

“The rest of them were so mad at us when they found out,” Raven says, laughing a little at the memory. Bellamy had nearly blown a gasket after they told him. “It was worth it.” She lays down next to Murphy. “Though, we should’ve saved the trip for later down the road. It would be nice to have an escape from the same old halls.”

“Two years down, three more to go,” Murphy sighs.

She doesn’t know how long they lay there in silence—could have been ten minutes, could have been two hours. There was something strangely comforting about being able to be around someone and not feel the need to speak. Eventually though, Murphy rolls on to his side to face her, the blue of his irises still bright in the dark space.

“I think Emori and I are over for good,” he deadpanned.

There are a million questions racing through her head that she wishes she could ask. And yes, she probably could ask them without a single remorse, but she knows that she shouldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” she says instead.

“Don’t be,” Murphy replies. “I’m not.” He lets out a long, tired sigh and rolls onto his back. She can’t see his face well in this angle, but she can sense the waves of exhaustion coming from him.  He clears his throat and the ghost of a melancholic smile graces his lips. “Did you know Emori doesn’t want children?” he says, and Raven’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Was that the deal-breaker?”

“It was definitely the cherry on fucking top,” he says.

Raven never expected to be having this conversation with him, of all people. She could see the topic being broached with Bellamy or even Harper, but Murphy? It caught her off guard.

 “Do you… want kids?” She feels a bit strange asking this. It almost feels too personal, too intimate to discuss, which is ridiculous.

“Not now, I don’t,” he says. “I’d be insane to want them now.” He rolls his shoulders and his voice gets quiet. “But once we get back to the ground?” He shrugs. “Yeah. I want them.”

“John Murphy is a family man,” she says, attempting to lighten the mood. “Who knew?” She jabs him lightly in the ribs.

“Okay, now you’re just making fun of me,” he says and starts to move away from her.

“No, I’m not,” she says, though maybe she laughs once or twice. “I’m not.” She reaches for him, her hand grabbing his wrist. “We’re allowed to think about the future.” Raven rolls onto her side to face him. “How many kids do you want?”

“I’m not going to answer any more questions,” he says stubbornly.

“Tell me,” she insists. “How many? Two, three, four? Want to start your own clan?”

“Suddenly, I wish I never brought this up,” he groans and looks over to her. Raven stares at him expectantly. “I’d be happy with as many as my wife would give me. Satisfied?” He turns his head toward her. “How about you? Should I be concerned about your spawn running amok?”

“My children, if I ever have some, will one day rule the world,” she grins. “And blow shit up probably.”

He turns his face back to the stars, an unreadable expression in his eyes. “I have a hypothetical question for you, Reyes. If we never make it back to the ground—”

“We will.”

“But if we don’t,” he continues. “Who would you procreate with? You know, to ensure the human race’s survival.”

Raven sighs, thinking it over. “Monty,” she says, drawing out a laugh from him. “Harper would have to share.”

“I thought you would say Bellamy,” he says. “I feel like all the girls have a hard-on for him.”

“Please, been there, done that,” she says with a flourish of her hand. “Besides, there’s no way Bellamy will ever be able to move on now that he knows Clarke is on the ground.” She clears her throat. “How about you? Who would become the Eve to your Adam?”

“Honestly?” he asks and she nods. “If we stayed up here forever, I don’t think I’d have kids.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s a cop-out answer.” Then, as an afterthought “Just admit you’d pick me.”

Murphy snorts. “That would be a recipe for disaster,” he says and she scoffs, pretending to be offended. “Don’t get me wrong, Reyes, the sex would be awesome,” he adds. “But our kids would be so messed up.”

She shrugs. “But are you really parents if you don’t mess up your child one way or another? Look at Abby, Jaha, _Indra_ …” she trails off. “Hell, even Monty’s mom. No parent is perfect—I mean, I would be of course,” she says, earning a dramatic eye roll from him. “But all things considered, I think we’d kick ass.” She lowers her voice. “Seriously though, John you’re going to be a great dad one day,” she says sincerely.

He turns to face her, and once again, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. His eyes dip to her lips, and she feels her face redden. When he speaks, his voice is gravelly.

“That’s the first time you’ve ever just used my first name,” he says. He smiles. “I think I like it better than ‘cockroach.’”

She knows she shouldn’t, yet her hands have a mind of their own. She tugs him by his shirt to her lips. Raven half-expects him to push her away, but he doesn’t. He tangles a hand in her ponytail and anchors her to him, and her lips part to grant him access to her mouth. He kisses her like he’ll never get the chance to again, breathes her in like she’s oxygen.

There are a million reasons why John Murphy was bad for her. But at that very moment, she couldn’t remember a single one.

Raven rolls over on top of him, anchoring her legs on either side of his hips. She tugs her shirt off, and Murphy skims his cold hands over her sides. She can feel him harden against the seam of her pants, and just that sensation drives her crazy.

He leans up, attacking her mouth with his lips again. He cradles her lower back as he sits up, her hands pulling his shirt upwards and over his head. Murphy trails kisses down the side of her neck, sucking on her pulse point.

“No marks,” she says, her voice breathy. It feels so good though, so she adds “at least where they can see them.”

His mouth dips lower into her clavicle and she runs her hands through his soft hair. She leans her head back and her eyes open. Suddenly, she sees stars in a whole different light.

They shed the rest of their clothes not soon thereafter. She’s on her back, her legs wrapped tightly around his torso, their chests touching and permeating heat. She’s never been so warm.

“Raven,” Murphy groans, his eyebrows scrunched. He looks wrecked. “Are you sure?”

She can feel him at her entrance, _wants him so badly_ , and she nods. “Yes,” she says. “Don’t make me beg.”

“Next time, then,” he says, and she can feel his smile against her lips as he slides in. She can’t help the soft, long moan that escapes her. He gives her a second to adjust to him, and probably to get a hold of himself too. When she’s ready, she wiggles her hips against him and he catches on.

She wishes she could say Murphy fucked her that day, or that she fucked him. But the word feels wrong.

John _made love_ to her under the stars, in that little alcove above the Ring’s kitchen, like she was made especially for him. Granted, he was only her fourth lover, but none of them, including Finn, made her feel like this.

It’s like he knew what she liked instinctively, lifting her leg higher up his back and thrusting _just so_ he hit that spot inside her, biting her earlobe and drawing quiet mewls she swears she didn’t know she was capable of making.

How perfectly fitting that the one person who she felt at a point had taken everything away from her, was capable of making her feel so entirely complete.

 

**Day 918**

_Bask in the glory_

_Of all our problems_

 

They manage to go six months without anyone knowing they’re sleeping together.

Honestly, it’s a miracle they make it that long. They’re not exactly careful, or going out of their way to hide what they’re doing. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. Murphy told her early on he didn’t give one fuck if the group found out about them.

Still, they’re also not the type of people to air their business and have to explain themselves to the group, especially when they haven’t defined things between them. Labels were made for a time before the world literally blew up.

Murphy is buried deep inside her when they’re discovered. They’re on her bed in the middle of round two for the night, her good leg hitched high on his back, when her door flies open and in strides Bellamy holding that stupid radio.

He stops immediately in his tracks when he sees them. Murphy protests the interruption, covering her body with his and telling Bellamy to get the fuck out. Raven is annoyed. She was just about to come.

She groans when Murphy pulls out of her, fighting back the frustrated whine building in her throat.

“I’m gonna kill him,” she says. “God, I was so close.”

She takes a look at Murphy, who’s rolled over to the side. He’s still hard, and his eyes are screwed shut as he tries to calm down. “If you don’t I will,” he says. “Out of everyone, I would’ve preferred Harper.”

She laughs. “No, Harper would’ve been worse. Girl can’t keep a secret to save her life.” She groans and covers her face with her hands. “We should go and find him. He’s probably freaking out.”

“Nah, you think?” Murphy says, clasping his hands behind his head. Raven snuggles onto his chest, her fingers trailing the faint line of hair dipping down. He catches her hand before she wanders too far. “You’re not helping, Reyes,” he says.

“Sorry you’re so insatiable.”

He snorts, his trademark smirk stretching across his lips. With a pained moan, he gets up from her bed and reaches down into the floor for their clothes. Once dressed, he helps her buckle her brace on her leg and kisses her knee through the rough fabric of her pants.

They find Bellamy in his room with his head in his hands. He looks at them like they’ve grown a second head.

“Guys, what the fuck did I just see?” Bellamy, ever so candidly, says.

Raven raises an eyebrow. “Well, Murphy was about to make me come,” she says. “So really, you should apologize.  Also, knock next time.”

Okay so maybe Murphy was rubbing off on her in more ways than one.

Murphy goes over to sit on the chair by Bellamy’s desk. He motions for Raven to join him, and she unabashedly sits on his knee. She’s sure they’re scandalizing Bellamy, but if they’re going to have this conversation, they might as well have some fun.

Bellamy lets out a long sigh. “How long have you guys been…” he trails off and motions between them vaguely.

Murphy wraps a hand around her middle. “Six months,” he says and Bellamy’s eyes bug out.

“Six months?” he repeats. “Why didn’t you guys say anything?”

“There was no need to,” Raven says. “This is between us and no one else.”

Bellamy fixes his eyes on Murphy. “What about Emori? You don’t think she has a right to know?”

“It would’ve caused unnecessary drama,” Murphy says with a sigh. “Besides, I didn’t think it was custom to tell your ex who you’re now going to pound town with.”

Raven grimaces. She hates that term. He knows it, too.

“I think it’s a little different when your ex is one of seven people in space, Murphy.” Bellamy runs a hand across his beard. “But I guess I’m just trying to understand how this even happened.”

“You don’t _need_ to understand, Bellamy,” Murphy says, and Raven can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s getting irritated. She lays a hand over the one hugging her waist.

“Bell, we’re good,” Raven says. “Really good. I know it’s kind of messed up, but you of all people should get that these things sometimes just happen.”

He nods, a look of guilt flooding his eyes. She knows Bellamy didn’t mean to sound judgmental.

He clears his throat. “So are you guys, like together? Or is it casual?” The implication was clear. He wanted to know if they were friends with benefits. She didn’t fault him for asking. As their de facto leader, he had to foresee any possible collateral damage.

“We’re just us, Bellamy,” Murphy says. “Take that however you want.”

They leave the conversation at that. Raven wonders how long it’s going to take for Bellamy to look them in the eyes.

“He’s right, you know,” Murphy says to her as they walk down the corridor. “I should tell Emori.”

Raven nods. “What are you going to tell her?”

Murphy sighs. He reaches for her hand, intertwining their fingers together for the first time. “I don’t know, but she should hear it from me.”

They walk in silence to her room. She knows he won’t be spending the night with her. She wishes he was. Her bed feels empty on the nights he sleeps away from her.

He brushes loose strands of hair behind her ears as he leans in for a quick kiss.

“Space has made you soft, Murphy,” she jokes.

He smirks, wrapping a hand in her ponytail and jolting her head back to expose the length of her neck. He rakes his teeth over her jugular, and she shivers in his arms. _Damn him._

Murphy presses a hot open-mouthed kiss at the top of her sternum before releasing her.

“Goodnight, Reyes.”

**Day 1019**

_'Cause we got the kind of love_

_It takes to solve 'em_

 

Raven wakes up with a start. She reaches over for Murphy but comes up empty-handed. She looks over to the empty spot beside her. Furrowing her brow, Raven sits up, clutching the sheet to her bare chest.

The clock on the nightstand reads 3:15 a.m. Only Murphy would be awake during the devil’s hour. She decides to go find him, and get a glass of water on the way. She’s parched.

She pushes her sheets away and reaches for her underwear and brace. She sees Murphy’s shirt lying on the floor and she slips it over her head. It’s long enough to reach her upper thighs so she forgoes pants. After buckling the brace to her leg, she heaves herself off the bed.

She takes the short way around the Ring to the kitchen, which is dark and with no one in sight. She serves herself a glass of water and takes a long sip. She rinses out the glass when she’s done.

On her way back, Raven decides to go the long way around the Ring. If Murphy wasn’t sitting by the window facing Earth, he was in the alcove above the kitchen, though she’s not sure why he would leave her in the middle of the night.

They’ve been together—because let’s face it, she needs him as much as he needs her—for a year now. He basically lives in her bunk. Even when they’re pissed at each other, they sleep in the same bed. Though to be fair, while bickering and sarcastic comments are common between them, she can count the number of times they’ve been truly mad at each other over the past year in a single hand.

As she rounds the corner, she sees Murphy sitting on the ledge of the window, one knee pulled close to his chest and his other leg dangling underneath him. His bare chest is only illuminated by the light filtering in from the window.

He looks up as he hears her uneven gait on the metal floors. “Forgot your pants, Reyes?” he says. “I like the shirt though.”

“I woke up and you weren’t there,” she says. “Can’t sleep?”

“Something like that.”

She perches on the window, looking out at the planet before them. The blazing orange that had coated Earth has died down to a dull bronze. Radiation is an ugly thing.

“What do you think the world would be like if a nuclear war hadn’t broken out?” she asks.

He takes a second to answer. “It would have been destroyed in a different way,” he says.

“You have such little faith in humanity, Murphy,” she says.

“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,” he says. “Robert Frost.”

“Is that a poem?” she asks, and he nods. “How does it go?”

Murphy turns away from the window and faces her. “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great, and would suffice.”

“A catastrophic ice age would not have been scientifically possible in the 21st century.”

“Really? That’s all you got from that?”

“The world was progressively getting hotter due to global warming,” she says.

“Raven, the dude wrote the poem in 1920. Women couldn’t even vote.”

“Well, all the more reason he was wrong.”

She gets a smile for that one, at least. The cold Ark air makes her get goosebumps, and she rubs her hands over her arms.

“Should’ve put some clothes on,” he says, turning back to the window, and she rolls her eyes.

“Come back to bed.”

He doesn’t say anything. She can sense something is wrong, and it’s starting to scare her.

“John?”

He licks his lips, bracing himself to say something. All her nerves are on edge. If he told her that it was over between them, she’d kill him. She swears she will kill him—Okay, maybe not but she’d be pretty upset.

“I love you.”

At first she’s not sure she heard right. “What?”

“I’m in love with you, Raven,” he says.

“You…love me?” Her heart is beating a hummingbird promise in her chest.

 “Like crazy.”

He looks like he’s going to say something else, but Raven launches herself at him, attacking his lips with her own. She kisses him feverously and it almost knocks them both from the window ledge.

“I love you too,” she says, smiling.

But Murphy isn’t. In fact, he doesn’t look very ecstatic.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

He shakes his head, but doesn’t push her away. Instead, he takes her hands. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“What?” she scoffs. “John, I don’t understand.”

He takes her chin in his hand and turns her head toward the window. “In two years, we’re gonna go back.” She frowns, facing him again, and he leans his forehead on hers. “Raven, we’re not going to make it on the ground. _We don’t make sense_ on the ground.”

“Oh, John,” she breathes. Her fingers push back his hair from his forehead. He needs a haircut. “This doesn’t have to make sense. Up here or down there.” She kisses him to prove her point—that what they have works.

Murphy pulls away with a slight shake of his head. “Things can change really quickly on the ground, you know that.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re gonna find someone down there that is good for you—who doesn’t remind you of _this,_ ” he touches her brace, “every single goddamn day.”

Of course. The guilt has never gone away. She has forgiven him, but Murphy will never forgive himself. In a way, it’s the most fucked up punishment imaginable—to fall in love with the person who you’ve irreversibly hurt the most.

“John Murphy, we would’ve happened anyways,” she says. “On the ground or in space, I love you.”

She believes what she’s saying. This thing with Murphy had been cultivating since he hobbled into the dropship after the Mountain Men captured their friends. While she may have convinced herself otherwise, she has never hated him. She knows she should hate him, but she can’t.

“You’re going to change your mind,” he whispers. “And I’m going to want to kill him,” he says and a soft laugh escapes her lips. “I’m serious. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

“Do you love me?” Raven asks.

“More than I should,” he says.

“Good, then come back to bed.”

 

**Day 1243**

_Yeah, I got issues_

_And one of them is how bad I need you_

 

Murphy’s hair reaches his shoulders when Raven decides she’s had enough of it. He looks like an exiled grounder. His permanent five o’clock shadow completes the look, but after enjoying the rasp of it when his face is buried between her thighs, she decides he’s allowed to keep his scruff.

The hair, no. That has to go.

“John Murphy, you sit in this chair or so help me, I will tie you down.”

Raven stands with her hip slightly cocked to one side besides an empty chair in the communal bathrooms, a pair of scissors in her hands. This is happening.

“Reyes, I like my hair,” Murphy protests. He doesn’t walk away from her though. He knows this is happening too, but being Murphy, he’s going to make it difficult for her.

“Murphy, you look like a wet dog,” she says. “Consider this a belated 21st birthday present.”

He smirks. “If I recall, you already gave me my present.” His eyes darken and she feels herself redden. It had been a very, very good birthday. They both had trouble walking for the following couple of days.

She sighs with faux annoyance. “Well, if you let me cut your hair—which by the way, is gonna make you look real smokin’—I’ll… do that thing you like,” she shrugs, innocently.

He bites his lip, thinking it over. “All of it?” he says. She knows she has him.

“I’ll even let you tie me up,” she says, lowering her voice.

He groans, and just like that he sits in the chair and says goodbye to his long locks.

The end result looks real good, if she says so herself. She’s never had a problem with thinking of him as a man rather than a boy, but now it’s very clear they’ve certainly grown up since leaving the ground. The short sides highlight the angled planes of his face and show off his jaw. He still has some length on the top though because she likes to run her hands through it.

Overall, she is pleased.

“There you go,” she says, leaning around him to kiss him. “You’re looking hot babe.”

He walks over to the mirror and examines his hair, turning his head this way and that way. He runs his fingers through his fringe and looks at her through the glass with a raised eyebrow.

“Not bad, Reyes.” He turns and wraps his arms around her lower back, his hands just grazing the top of her ass. “You should see if Bellamy lets you tame his mane.”

Raven snorts, leaning her head into his chest. “I don’t understand why both of you insist on looking like cavemen. I mean, Bellamy’s beard is just awful.”

“The man’s almost 30, Raven. Live and let live.”

She brushes off the little hairs still stuck on his shirt. Those are going to be a pain to get off, but it’s worth it. She tugs the bottom of his shirt upwards. “Off,” she says. “Go put on a clean one.”

He obliges her, handing her his white v-neck and planting a kiss on her lips. They hear someone come in and they separate.

Emori gives them a half-wave as she enters the bathroom, a polite smile on her face.

Relations between her and Emori have improved over the last few months. At first, Emori could barely look at her, she was so upset. They talked things out eventually, and while they will never be best friends, they are civil to each other. It makes it easier for Murphy, who will always care about Emori in some way. You never forget your first love.

Murphy leaves them, announcing he’ll in the common room if anyone needs him. Raven grabs a broom and dustpan from the cleaning closet in the corner and starts sweeping the floor.

“He looks great,” Emori says, clutching her clothes to her chest. Her hair is tied up and her cheeks are dusted with a pink hue. She must’ve been working out. “You did a good job.”

“Thanks,” Raven replies. “It was a hassle getting him to let me do it.”

“It was probably just for show,” Emori tells her. “He’d do anything for you.” Without giving her a chance to respond, she leaves the front area of the bathroom and wanders to the showers in the back.

Raven takes a deep breath and shakes her head to herself. She resumes sweeping up the dark hair littering the bathroom floor tile, making sure to collect every strand. They don’t have janitors in the Ring, so cleaning up after themselves is vital to both their health and sanity.

She tries to erase Emori’s words from her mind, but they just won’t go away. They might mean well, in Emori’s case she’s just not sure, but everyone seems to have an opinion of their relationship. It’s annoying. Even if they are the only seven people in space, they have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. Frankly, she’s over the whole “Murphy worships the ground you walk on” stigma that surrounds them.

Because, for starters, it’s not the basis of a healthy relationship and secondly, it’s not true.

Their complicated “how we met” backstory aside, her relationship with Murphy was rooted on mutual respect and understanding for one another. There was no one left alive that comprehended the reason why she was the way she was and how her childhood influenced it. Murphy didn’t push.

He was also the first man she’d been with who never used manipulation to get what he wanted. He laid it all out for her, the good, the bad and the ugly and let her choose what she wanted. Sure, they could tease each other about sexual favors in exchange for day-to-day stuff, but it was lighthearted and the other person always knew they didn’t actually have to follow through if they didn’t want to. He also didn’t sugarcoat anything and no matter how fucked up things were, he’d still make some smartass comment on it all. She loved him for that.

And she knew that he loved her for the same, if not very similar reasons—they both could take as good as they dished, and a day with each other was never boring. That was important.

But not as important as the fact that they build each other up when they’re together. Raven feels she’s her best self when he’s around, which is insane considering where they were three and half years ago. If someone had told her that she’d be crazy in love with the “psychopath” that shot her, hung Bellamy and killed two members of the 100, she’d tell them they were out of their minds.

Now, she’d remind them that Murphy also saved Bellamy from falling off a cliff, refused to take A.L.I.E’s chip no matter how much pain he was in, saved Clarke’s life by literally pumping the heart of the girl who raped him, stole medicine to try to heal grounders affected by radiation and stayed behind to help her to run from the drones as the others flew past her.

So yeah, the whole “Murphy worships you” stigma pisses her off. Their relationship is so much more than that.

She doesn’t realize how angry she actually is until she snaps at Monty in the med bay later that afternoon as they discuss their ongoing process of making enough algae-based biofuel to power the spaceship back to Earth. They’re only a year and a half away from the five-year-mark, and while they’ve successfully managed to create fuel, the process is long and arduous.

“I just think there’s got to be a better way to press more algae,” Monty says, examining their latest oil extraction. It barely reaches the middle of their small bucket. “I’d like to have extra fuel in case something goes wrong.”

“There isn’t!” Raven yells. “I don’t have the materials or the chemicals needed to whip up a solvent. If I did, don’t you think I would’ve already done it? We’re not making a fucking soufflé here.” Raven slams her fist on the metal table and the sound echoes in the room.

Monty stares at her, his brows furrowed over his always-kind eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says calmly. “I didn’t mean to imply you aren’t doing everything you can under the circumstances.”

Raven sighs and shakes her head. She leans over the table, resting her elbows on its cold surface. Her hands come up to rub at her temples. “No, I’m sorry,” she says. “I know you’re just trying to help.” She straightens herself up. “Even if we had the materials to activate a chemical reaction, we don’t have the equipment necessary to harvest a lot of crude oil in one go. Maybe if Mecha station hadn’t been sent to the ground, but I’ve searched the Ring… Everything that’s of use is in here.”

The fuel process takes her about a week to produce anywhere between 100-250 gallons of fuel. They need 200,000 gallons to power their descent. While they’ve carved out a good portion of that, there’s still a lot of work to do.

“Is everything okay?” Monty asks suddenly.

She feels her face relax—it must’ve been pinched. She considers lying to Monty and telling him everything is just peachy.

“I’m just upset at something Emori said,” Raven said dismissively. “Don’t pay attention to me.”

Monty hums, nodding. “What did she say?”

“Some bull about Murphy doing anything I ask him to,” she replies. “Which, is so not true. No matter how many times I tell him to take off his shoes before getting into bed, he always does the same thing.”

“Not much mud to track in up here,” Monty says.

“Haha,” Raven says, rolling her eyes.

“Emori is not wrong though,” he says as he pours in alcohol into the crude algae oil. “He loves you. I’d do anything for Harper.” He wipes his hand on his apron. “I think the problem is it came from Emori.”

“And why would that bother me? At this point, he and I have been together just as long as they were.”

Monty shrugs nonchalantly. “I think it bothers you because deep down, you know that Murphy will always feel as if he doesn’t deserve you,” he holds up a finger as Raven opens her mouth to protest. “And with Emori, he doesn’t feel that way. He’s good enough _for her._ He’ll never feel that way with you.” He lays a hand on her shoulder when she looks down at the floor. “I never said that’s a bad thing,” he says. “There are pros and cons in both situations.”

She knows he’s trying to be reassuring, but it falls flat.

The day seems to drag on after that. She and Monty work on fuel for the rest of the day. By the time dinner rolls around, she urges him to go ahead. She’ll eat later, she tells him. He shrugs, but doesn’t insist.

While she’s not hungry, she’s also not in the mood to eat with everyone today. If she changes her mind, she knows Monty keeps fresh algae chips in the fridge for snacking throughout the day. They’re not great, but after three years of eating the stuff, she’s pretty sure her taste buds have accustomed themselves to the taste. The chips are definitely better than the one attempt at porridge Monty tried.

Murphy doesn’t help in the kitchen. He says it’s a waste of his talent.

It’s well into the evening when he wanders into the med bay looking for her. Even though she’s the one that cut his hair, she still gets a shock at seeing him when he walks through the door. He really looks like a different person—older and more chiseled, if she dared to say.

“You didn’t eat,” he says as he closes the door behind him.

“Wasn’t hungry,” she tells him.

He strides over to her, looking over her shoulder as she works on the pressing process for the algae. Her shoulders and biceps strain with effort as she uses her body weight to try to separate the crude algae product they need. It usually takes a few presses to get it right.

She feels him place his hands on her hip and her body is suddenly on hyper-alert. Instinctively she leans her neck to one side as Murphy peppers soft kisses along the length of it.

“I know there’s something you’re not telling me, Reyes,” he whispers, his hot breath fanning her ear and creating goosebumps on her arms. “I would suggest you just spit it out.”

She closes her eyes and sighs, reaching a hand up to caress the side of his face. He leans into her palm and presses his mouth to the center of it.

“I’m just tired,” she says. He doesn’t immediately respond, so she knows he’s waiting on her to elaborate. “Sometimes they drive me up the wall.”

Murphy hums and he rests his chin on her shoulder. “Don’t you just hate it when people have opinions?” She can feel his jaw moving as he speaks. “I’m assuming someone said something stupid.”

“Extremely,” she says. She turns her body to face him and lifts up on her toes to bring her lips to his. He kisses her back, hands coming up to cradle her chin.

Raven pulls away. “Do you love me?” she asks. It’s become sort of their thing.

“Like crazy,” he whispers and pulls her in for another searing kiss. “More than I should,” he mumbles against her lips.

 

**Day 1648**

_You do shit on purpose_

_You get mad and you break things_

_Feel bad, try to fix things_

 

Raven is deeply asleep and entangled in Murphy’s arms when they are jolted awake to the sound of frantic insistent knocking.

Raven groans softly, burrowing her face into his bare chest. Murphy curses underneath his breath and she feels him stretch out away from her. He must be checking the time.

“What time is it?” she asks, her voice groggy with sleep and soft against the ongoing knocking. “Make it stop.”

“Just after four,” he replies. “Go away!” he yells but the knocking doesn’t stop.

A tired and cranky John Murphy is a force to be reckoned with. Raven hasn’t quite fully woken up yet, and is definitely not ready to leave the warmth of his arms, yet he starts to pull away from her to answer the door. She protests, but if it’s what it takes for the knocking to stop, she guesses it’s a small price to pay.

Clad in only his black boxers, Murphy answers the door, narrowly avoiding a strike to the face by a wild-eyed Bellamy, who is also down to his underwear.

Raven sits up, pulling the sheet to her chest and adjusting the shoulder of Murphy’s black threadbare t-shirt she sleeps in. Now more awake and alert, she realizes something is wrong.

Bellamy makes eye contact with her in the doorway, completely disregarding Murphy’s glare. “Raven, there’s a problem with the Ring.”

That wakes them right up. The next few minutes are chaotic as she and Murphy scramble to get dressed and pull on her brace. Murphy’s fingers are quick but careful as he straps it on for her. All the while, Bellamy informs Raven off what’s going on.

He tells her he felt a rumble less than 10 minutes ago, and that the corridor between the showers and the kitchen is shaking every minute or two. He alerts her to the groaning sound that is being heard throughout the Ring sporadically, the sound reverberating just seconds after he says that.

Raven has a strong suspicion of what is going on, but she _really, really_ hopes she’s wrong, for once.

Once dressed, the three of them shoot off into the direction of the corridor where everyone else is gathered. It seems the event startled everybody else awake.

Harper clutches the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “What’s going on?” she asks, a tremble in her voice.

“I heard a crash,” Echo said. “It came from the east.”

Raven feels all of them looking to her, even though her eyes are fixated on the floor as she tries to gauge where exactly the problem was located. An exact location would give her an edge in fixing things as soon as possible. They couldn’t let it go as it was for much longer, not with the way the floor was shaking underneath them.

“I think we’ve been hit by a meteor,” Raven deadpans. Emori and Echo look confused—she’s not sure they know what a meteor is. At Harper’s alarmed expression, she quickly explains what that means for them. “It’s not that bad, really. This used to happen on the Ark pretty often. I’m gonna need to put on a suit, go check the fissure and weld it back together.” She stepped a few paces forward, hearing the resulting grumbles and estimating where the crack was. “I’m pretty sure we were grazed underneath by a medium-sized meteor, which isn’t ideal, but better than a head-on impact.”

Meteor showers, while not common, weren’t exactly rare. As a zero-g mechanic in the Ark, she used to do repairs like this every so often. Of course, since the Ark was much larger than the portion they were currently standing in, most people back then usually couldn’t tell when a meteor impacted the station. It occurs to her that she’s never done a repair of this magnitude on her own.

She pushes that thought out of her mind and turns back to the group. “Like I said, all I need is a spacesuit and a laser. I just need to spacewalk my way underneath this spot and weld the metal back in place.”

Bellamy opens his mouth to say something but is beaten to the punch by Murphy, whose facial expression looks less than impressed.

“Well, if that’s _all_ you need to do,” he retorts, his voice oozing with sarcasm. “Go right ahead.”

Raven can barely suppress her eye roll. “John,” she says, a warning clear in her tone.

“No, really,” he responds, not missing a beat. He’s purposely picking a fight with her and she knows it. “Go right the fuck ahead underneath this death trap with a mother-fucking laser. And while you’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and take a leisurely walk in space. It’s not like we’re in the middle of a meteor shower.” He gestures with his chin at the small window in the hallway. She can see small objects gliding past.

She grits her teeth. “Can we not do this right now?” she says. Now is so not the time, and she loathes that they’re fighting in public.

“Sure, let’s just wait until a stray meteor hits you upside the head and breaks off your tether to the Ring.”

Raven ignores his comment and turns to Bellamy. “Prepare the spacesuit.”

“ _Reyes_ ,” Murphy says through his teeth. There’s a lot implicated in the tone of his voice as he says her last name—anger, worry, fear, resignation… He knows she has to do this, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

It’s why it doesn’t surprise her when he follows her and Bellamy to the airlock and snatches the spacesuit from Bellamy’s hands. Grumbling and cursing under his breath, he drops on one knee to help her step into the heavy suit. He mutters something like _“Out of everyone here…”_ as he pulls the suit up on her body.

When all she has left to put on is her helmet, Murphy grabs her chin roughly, jerking her face up toward him.

“I swear if something happens,” he says, his voice thick. “The meteors will be the least of your worries. I will go out and kill you myself.”

She smiles. “I know you will.”

Bellamy hands her a small torch. Her eyes roam over the handheld device.

“Is that the only one we have?”

“Everything else must’ve gone down to the ground,” he says.

Bellamy steps out to give her and Murphy some space. Space to say goodbye, she guesses. Raven has to fix the Ring. All of their lives depend on it.

She can tell Murphy is still seething with barely-contained anger, frustration and helplessness. There’s nothing he can do to help her and it kills him. She can see that.

Raven leans in to lock her lips on his, a hungry kiss laced with hope. He kisses her like a man dying of thirst who has found the last drop of water in a vast lake. He kisses her like she’s the only star in the endless galaxies that surround them. He kisses her like nothing else matters.

Sometimes, their relationship is hard to explain to the others. But what she and Murphy have? It’s worth dying for.

She’s not stupid. She knows there’s a good possibility she won’t come back from this.

“Thus with a kiss, I die,” Murphy whispers as they separate, his breath fanning over her lips.

Raven touches her forehead to his. “May we—”

Murphy covers her mouth with his hand and shakes his head adamantly. “No,” he says. “You don’t get to say that. People who say that don’t come back.”

She wraps her arms around him, but with the bulky spacesuit, the embrace is awkward.

And then she puts on her helmet. Murphy hands her a large bag of scrap metal they’ve managed to scrounge up and steps out of the airlock chamber. Once he’s back with Bellamy behind the glass, Bellamy presses the button. She’s out.

Spacewalking is not as easy as it seems. Even with a tether connected to the Ring, there is no stability, nothing underfoot to secure your footfalls. Yes, she’s walking on air. She’s also walking against it.

At first, conditions seem to be on their side. The debris flying by has decreased in size, now just pebbles of organic material. She makes it to the underside of the Ring relatively quickly and finds the crack in the metal.

It’s substantial, almost four feet long and six inches wide, she estimates. But it’s not deep and that makes a world of difference.

She positions herself horizontally underneath the fissure, as if she were working on a rover back on the ground. Carefully, she unzips the bag strapped to her just enough to pull out the first piece of scrap metal, quickly closing it shut afterward. She can’t let any piece float away—they need everything they have, and if a scrap were to get away from her and head in the direction of the Earth, it could be catastrophic to anything on the ground.

“Raven, can you hear us?” Bellamy’s voice comes in through the built-in communication system in her suit.

“Loud and clear, boss,” she says. She hears him sigh in relief.

“How bad is it?” He asks.

“Not great, but not terrible,” Raven replies with a sigh. “Give me some time to work on it and we should be fine.” She can hear Murphy grumbling in the background and fond smile grazes her lips.

Then she gets to work and she is a machine—no room for nonsense or mistakes, just precise calculated moves as she repairs the underside of their life vessel. They still had about six months to go before they could go back to Earth. She couldn’t fuck this up.

She’s on the tail end of the fissure when she hears Bellamy swear through her helmet.

“Raven, you need to get inside now.”

Damn it. She doesn’t need him to tell her why. In her core, she knows the second wave of the meteor shower is headed their way. She can feel it.

But she can’t go back inside before repairing the remaining damage. That could spell death for them, and goddamn they’ve already made it this far.

So she ignores Bellamy and keeps working as fast as she can.

“Reyes, what the hell are you doing?” Murphy’s voice comes in through her headset. “Bellamy said get your ass inside.”

She’s almost done. All she needs is a couple more plates and…

The rumble catches her by surprise. There’s no sound, of course, aside from her own breathing and the static of the com-system. But she feels the space around her _shake_. Her hands scrape against the underside of the Ring without merit.

Fear pits itself deep in her belly. But she knows what she has to do.

Raven ignores the guys yelling at her and continues to weld the spare metal plates onto the fissure. And at first, everything is just fine. She can see the small meteors whizzing besides her through her peripheral vision.

The irony is that it’s only when she finally finishes that the meteors get too close for comfort.

“I’m coming back in,” she says, and immediately yelps as a rock the size of her head flies by her shoulder.

“Are you ok? What’s going on out there?” Bellamy asks.

“I’m handling it,” She snaps. “Just be prepared to close the airlock on my count.”

“Not without you in it.”

“Obviously, you idiot.” 

She’s gritting her teeth with effort as she makes her way to the entrance into the Ring. She has to position herself flat against it, as if she was scaling its underside, so as to avoid the debris whooshing by.

A single hit from a sizable meteor and there was a good chance her century-old spacesuit would tear.

Raven doesn’t even want to think about what that would mean.

And thankfully, she doesn’t need to. She makes it.

The airlock chamber closes with a satisfying hiss and Raven feels herself relax as gravity pulls her down to the ground. She crumples on the floor gracelessly, her bad leg giving way under her. She could care less about that.

She unclicks her helmet from her suit and pulls it off her head, savoring the first gulp of air that she inhales.

A pair of hands circled themselves underneath her arms and hoisted her up from behind. She knows it’s Murphy.

She struggles to unfasten the suit from her body, her hands shaking. In that moment, it’s like everything is happening in slow motion. Her breath is loud in her ears and she can only focus on one task at a time. She feels something sticky dribbling down her face, and when she touches a spot above her lip, her fingers come back stained red.

She’s vaguely aware of Murphy cradling her face in his hands and calling out to her as the world fizzes away in a cloud of grey and white pinpricks.

When she comes to, she’s in her bed. She’s no longer wearing the space suit. Instead, she’s back in Murphy’s faded black tee that she loves so much. The worn sheets are soft on her bare legs and for a split second, she considers that she possibly dreamt the whole incident up.

But Murphy isn’t beside her. He is sitting across their small room in the cluttered desk, leaning over her papers, eyes closed and forehead resting on his hand. The clock on the table reads 9:23 a.m., so she’s been asleep for at least three hours. She’s actually not quite sure what time she got back inside, or how long the repair took.

She sits up on the lumpy mattress, the springs creaking. The noise wakes Murphy, who jolts and hits his head on the wall. He groans, rubbing his hand on the sore spot. It makes Raven laugh softly, and Murphy shoots her a glare.

“Oh, c’mon,” she says. “It’s just a bump.”

He shakes his head. “I’m still pissed at you, Reyes. Don’t think you’re little fainting spell made anything better. You gave me a fucking heart attack.

Raven moves to stand up but he’s next to her in a split second. “Nope, you’re staying in bed.” The bed shifts as he sits on the edge.

“It was just a nosebleed,” Raven protests. “You can’t keep me in bed all day.”

“I can and I will,” Murphy retorts. “You’re resting today. Monty is going to take over fuel duty today.”

She pushes her hair away from her face, mildly annoyed. But at the same time, she knew there was no way she was actually going to stay in bed all day—maybe for a few more hours to satisfy Murphy.

Raven pulls him in for a languid kiss. He gives in to her for a few minutes, and then nips at her bottom lip, pulling on it lightly with his teeth. It drives her crazy and he knows it. When he pulls away shortly after that, he knows this is payback.

She rests her head on the crook of his neck and wraps her arms around his middle. “I’m sorry for scaring the crap out of you,” she says.

He sighs against her hair. “I’m sorry we argued in front of the others. I know you hate that.”

She did. Whether it was conscious or not, the others tended to pass judgment, as humans do.

“Make it up to me?” she whispered and dragged her teeth on the shell of his ear. His pale neck flushed and he pulled away, chuckling in that sarcastic way of his.

“You have a one-track mind, Reyes.” Even in the dim lighting of their room, she could see his dilated pupils.

“If you’re intent of keeping me in bed, you might as well make it worthwhile.”

“You almost died.”

She pulls him toward her by the fabric of his shirt. “I’m very much alive.”

Raven rids herself of his t-shirt and tosses it on the floor. Clad in just a pair of grey underwear, she fixates her eyes on him, waiting.

He lets out a long sigh, a small smirk on his lips. He pulls his shirt off by the collar, and Raven clambers onto his lap. She wraps her legs around his back, aligning her core with his and feeling him grow against her as she sucks on that sensitive spot on the side of his neck. His ensuing groan sends a spark right to her belly, one that after two and a half years since the first time they had sex, still hadn’t gone away.

He was rough around the edges, yes. But inside, John Murphy was the home she’d been searching for her whole life.

Murphy laves his tongue up the center of her throat, catching her chin with his lips. She lets herself get lost in the feel of him against her, of his hands raking up her bare back, of the heat of his mouth against her.

“Yes?” he murmurs against her ear.

“Yes.”

He hooks his hands in the waistband of her underwear and drags them down her legs as she unbuttons the clasp of his pants.

Not long thereafter, she’s riding him within an inch of her life. It’s not fast—she can’t do fast in this position because of her leg. But she slams down on him like her life depends on it. It’s neither of their favorite positions, but in ways, it’s more intimate than all the others.

Murphy has to relinquish control and she has to let him guide her. It’s a paradox that makes sense only to them.

 

**Day 1820**

_But you're perfect_

_Poorly wired circuit_

 

They’re just one week away from going back to Earth.

The excitement and anxiety in the air is palpable. The rocket is ready, the fuel is ready, and they’re ready. Getting back to the ground is the only thing they talk about as a group. Monty can’t wait to see what the radiation has done to the surviving flora and fauna. Harper keeps talking about her cravings for meat. Echo misses snow. Emori wants to be able to dig her toes into the earth, and all Bellamy talks about is seeing Clarke. Though they never did get the radio to work, he still listened to her every day.

As for Murphy? He says he can’t wait until he gets to fuck her against a tree. Apparently, that’s something he’s always wanted but never gotten the chance to do. Of course, he doesn’t say that to the group. Instead, he talks about not having to drink recycled piss water ever again.

She’s going to miss it up here, but she would never say that aloud. The ground has taken so much from her—Finn, her leg, her mind for a while… In space, she’s the best version of herself. The stars around them are like a security blanket.

She loves the ground, but there’s something to be said about feeling safe. She’s never felt safe on Earth.

And curled up on a couch with Murphy playing with her hair as he reads? She feels the safest.

“What would you guess is the meaning of the word ‘monorchid?’” he asks, and she rolls her eyes.

“Are you reading the dictionary again?”

He shushes her, and she laughs. “Well, do you want me to be quiet or answer your question?” she says.

“Monorchid,” he repeats. “Give me your best, Raven Reyes.” He purposely closes the small dictionary so that she can’t cheat, his forefinger holding his place inside.

“A parasitic flower that lives off two separate plants?”

Murphy hums in approval. “Not bad,” he says, but makes a mock-buzzer sound immediately after. “But wrong. It means having only one testicle.”

“Oh, you mean like you?” she replies.

He chuckles against her hair. “You’re being facetious again.”

“There you go with that word again,” Raven burrows her face in the crook of his neck. “It’s like you got stuck in the F section.”

“I just gave you a word starting with M, genius.”

She groans against him, stretching out her legs away from where they’re entangled with his. Now that everything is prepared and all they have to do is wait until the five year anniversary of their arrival, they can be lazy. Needless to say, it’s been really nice.

“Can’t you find something better to do than annoy me?” she says.

He chuckles against her hair. “We could fuck,” he says.

Raven rolls her eyes. It’s his solution to everything. Bored? Let’s fuck.  Can’t fall asleep? Let me tire you out. Angry? Let’s fuck it out. She had just blown him that morning after she awoke to his head buried between her thighs.

“It’s like you have a one-track mind,” she says, but doesn’t pull away. She can’t lie and say it doesn’t feel amazing to be wanted.

“Reyes, we have seven days to desecrate this entire ship,” he says, nosing into her forehead. “Time’s a wastin’.”

She looks around the empty common room. They are all alone, and they’ll never come back after returning to Earth. By the way Murphy is looking at her, all heat and a playful smirk, he knows he has her. He tilts her chin up to him and devours her whole, or at least that’s what it feels like.

After three years, she swears she’ll never tire of kissing this man—the yin to her yang.

They shift until she is stretched out under him. His hand travels downward from her chin and over her shirt, between her breasts and circling over her navel. She tugs his shirt up and splays her fingers on his taut and increasingly pale stomach.

“You know,” she says in between kisses. “It’s a wonder you don’t glow in the dark.”

He laughs against her lips. “I promise that when we get back to the ground, I’ll set time aside to work on my golden tan.”

“You mean burn,” she bites at his lower lip, eliciting a groan from him.

He shushes her, latching his lips to her jugular. He slips a hand down her pants, fingers tantalizingly close to where she wants, no _needs_ , him most.

Then they hear the door swing open and it’s all Raven can do not to roll her eyes. Really? Now?

She makes eye contact with Echo as Murphy sighs and retrieves his hand, lifting himself up and sitting back against the couch. His hair is mussed and lips red, all things that scream lust. His face is a mirror of inconvenience though.

Echo shrugs, not even trying to be apologetic. She leans against the open doorframe. “Bellamy wants us all in command.”

Raven furrows her brow. “Why?”

Echo shakes her head, and shrugs again. “I don’t know, but he seems persistent.”

And that’s how they all find themselves around the table in command. Murphy stands behind her chair, arms crossed. Echo takes the seat beside Raven. Monty, Harper and Emori sit across from them. Bellamy stands at the head of the table, hands braced on either side.

Raven searches for clues in her friends’ eyes as to why Bellamy called this meeting, but finds nothing. It’s been so long since they have called an actual meeting like this. She guesses it’s been at least four years. The whole thing unnerves her and for the first time since arriving, she wonders if space has made her soft.

“So, to what do we owe this family reunion?” Murphy says at last, breaking the tense silence. “I thought we’d already discussed everything.”

Bellamy sighs. “All but one thing,” he says, pushing off the table.

They wait for him to continue. His face is conflicted.

“We need a contingency plan,” he says.

At this, Raven cocks her head. “For what?”

“If something goes wrong,” Bellamy replies. “We need to be prepared to face the fact the Earth may not be livable yet. It still looks like a wasteland from up here. When we go down in seven days, we need to have a plan in case we can’t leave the lab for another period of time.”

“Clarke is down there though,” Harper interjects. “You’re still getting her radio transmissions right?”

“Yes, but you all know we only catch a few words from her—not enough to get a full picture.”

“Plus, she’s a _natblida_ now,” Emori says.

Echo makes a sound of indignation in the back of her throat. “Clarke is not a _natblida._ She unnaturally injected herself with nightblood, but surely a _Sangeda splita_ like you wouldn’t know the difference.”

“That’s rich coming from a traitor,” Murphy says, clearing his throat.

Emori’s eyes flash to him. “I don’t need you to defend me, John.” He rolls his eyes.

“Enough!” Raven brings a hand to her forehead. “Point is, if Clarke survived the death wave, she’s probably fine with whatever radiation level the ground is at right now. Bellamy is right—we may not be able to withstand it.”

“Okay, so there’s the research question,” Monty says, speaking up for the first time. “Now what’s the solution?”

Raven looked to Bellamy and suddenly everything makes sense. It’s like a gear fell into place in her brain and she knows what Bellamy is trying to ask them to do—something that kills him inside and goes against everything he wants.

“We stay,” Raven says. “At least another six months, just to be sure.”

Harper immediately stiffens and begins to shake her head adamantly. “Absolutely not, that’s not an option.”

“Harper, we’ve made it this far,” Bellamy says, finally taking a seat at the table. “Trust me, there’s nothing more that I want than to go back. I’d have left years ago, if I could.”

“You don’t understand—”

Echo interrupts Harper’s pleas. “I think it’s a good idea. We haven’t made contact with the _Wonkru_ in over three years. We don’t know what waits for us down there.”

“We should take a vote,” Emori suggests. “After all, we’re all equals here, aren’t we?” She says the last part while staring directly at Echo.

“That’s fair,” Bellamy agrees. “All those in favor of waiting, raise your hand.”

Raven, Bellamy and Echo put their hands in the air. Raven cranes her head back to look at Murphy, whose hands are still crossed against his chest.

“All those in favor of leaving in a week?” Bellamy says.

Emori, Monty and Harper raise their hands. Murphy’s hands remained tucked underneath his arms.

“Murphy, you can’t abstain,” Bellamy says. “You have to vote, one way or another.”

Murphy smirks bitterly. He wipes at his five-o-clock shadow with one hand, cradling his chin. “Sorry, I just think it’s wild the decision is up to me.” He fixes his gaze on Emori. “I was so sure you’d vote to stay—self-preservation and all.”

“The sooner we go down, the sooner I can leave and never see you all again,” she replies tartly. “So yes, it’s self-preservation.”

Murphy turns to Raven. She’s not sure exactly what he’s thinking, but she knows which way he’s leaning—as much as it scares him to think he may lose her because of it.

“Pack your bags,” he says. “We ain’t never coming back up here.”

 

**Day 1827**

_And got hands like an ocean_

_Push you out, pull you back in_

 

Everything goes wrong.

It was the epitome of Murphy’s law. Anything that could have gone wrong, did.

First, Monty slipped as he and Bellamy carried one of the algae farms into the spaceship, it’s glass base shattering underfoot into a million tiny glass shards. She and Harper then spent the next 30 minutes painstakingly removing every tiny piece of glass embedded in Monty’s ankle and left forearm. It would have taken less time, but Harper was so nervous her hands shook.

Then, Murphy accidentally hit the airlock button—and for fucks sake, thankfully there wasn’t anyone in the chamber at the time—and three of their fuel canisters got sucked into oblivion. She nearly slapped him for that. He, or one of them, could have died.

She didn’t though. She had been so relieved he was fine that she didn’t even care they lost fuel. They had plenty. She had made sure of that over the last five years.

They managed to keep pushing through even after both incidents. A vote had been cast and it meant they were returning today, even if all the events of the morning were telling Raven they should stay. It didn’t feel right.

But, she ignored her gut and a little after noon, the seven of them piled inside the rocket and prepared for takeoff.

“I don’t understand,” Raven says as they all wait for a takeoff that would never occur. And it was all her fault. “I did everything right.”

“What’s going on, Raven?” Monty unbuckles himself from his seat and looks over her shoulder.

“It’s not registering the fuel,” she says, her voice soft, incredulous. “That can’t be.”

Monty closes his eyes, his brow furrowed. “Maybe it needed a liquid oxidizer.”

Raven shakes her head, on the verge of tears. “We don’t have that,” she says, and she’s seriously about to lose it. “God, I would have used it if we did. I’m not an idiot.”

“No one is saying you’re an idiot,” Bellamy says.

They sit in silence for what seems like forever until Raven abruptly unbuckles herself from the ship and gruffly opens the door.

She vaguely hears Emori ask if this means they can’t take off when she loses it in the airlock chamber, crumbling into a corner and crying into her hands. She’s frustrated, angry and upset with herself. She was so sure this would work—so sure she could do this for them.

She feels someone slide on the floor beside her. Murphy tucks her into his side, and she cries into his shirt.

“It’s all my fault,” she says. “I failed them.”

“You haven’t failed anyone,” he says. “We don’t have to go down today. Whatever it is, I know we can come up with a solution.”

He lets her cry her frustration out in his threadbare grey shirt, even if she leaves it soaked and salty with her tears. The others leave them alone for a while, but she knows they have questions.

It’s how they find themselves together in command again.

“I need to make hydrogen peroxide from scratch,” she says. “It’s the only viable way to get the fuel to work in the shortest amount of time.”

“And how long would you need?” Harper says.

“For the amount of fuel we need? Three months, at minimum.”

 

**Day 2199**

_'Cause you don't judge me_

_'Cause if you did, baby, I would judge you too_

_No, you don't judge me_

_'Cause you see it from the same point of view_

 

Three months turn into one year and four failed attempts to get back.

It takes a toll on all of them—Harper especially.

She dreams of having a family with Monty and somewhere approaching their five year mark, she stopped feeling like she was living and started feeling like she was just surviving. After the second attempt to get back, no one but Monty saw her for two weeks.

Raven worked almost nonstop around the clock to try and find solutions to their problems. When her eight attempt at hydrogen peroxide almost explodes in her face, Murphy began to make sure she at least got five hours of sleep every night.

They all tried to make the most of that extra year in space, but spirits decline drastically after six months. It felt like there was nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to. The Ring began feeling like a prison they couldn’t escape.

Bellamy did his best to keep their spirits up, at least while they were all together. But Raven had heard him sobbing more than just a few times. He hadn’t made contact with his sister in four years and Clarke’s transmissions became even rarer.

So when their fifth try at going back to Earth works, she doesn’t know who is more surprised.

This time, tears of relief circumvent the spaceship.

They’re going home.

“Aim for that patch of green,” Bellamy says, pointing to a pinprick of color among the wasteland.

Murphy holds her hand as they descend.

There are many things she’s looking forward to doing on the ground. As he squeezes her hand, she can’t imagine doing a single one of them without him. He insists that she deserves better.

In her heart, she knows he’d back away if he ever thought she wanted someone else. She can’t even fathom that possibility. He has burrowed her way into her life and heart like the cockroach she used to call him. He’s hers and she is his. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just is.

The landing is solid. They make it unscathed.

Before she opens the door, she turns to Murphy.

“Do you love me?” she whispers to him, and he nods.

“Like crazy.”

The door hisses open.

_Yeah, I got issues_

_And one of them is how bad I need you_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Phew. Hope you enjoyed! Sound off your thoughts and let me know if you're excited for season 5! I can't wait.........


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